Sure, buy a t-shirt at Target. Trace the lineage of that thing and you'll have nightmares for a week. Where is the love? The L.A. based American Apparel show the love by designing simple basics in solid colors and then doing all the cutting and sewing in-house. Not only does American Apparel completely cut exploitation out of the process, but the clothes themselves are well-designed and the fabric-well, it feels good. Their t-shirts (and all the varieties within: long-sleeve, henley, ribbed, ringer) make you feel like you've been living in a Beefy-T vacuum your whole life. You should know by now that the t-shirt is the one thing you really, really need to wear. It's where it all begins and if you can't get that right — then you might as well proceed directly to the sweatpants. Why does it work? It's a bit more fitted, the fabric is thinner and stretches slightly where it needs to. It even smells good. Is it ridiculously overpriced? No. Their clothes, which center on the basics like t-shirts for men and simple cotton tops and dresses for women, all run at reasonable prices. There's no branding overload and if you want to have some sort of ridiculous slogan like "Porn Star In Training" printed on them, you'll have to do it yourself.